Sigh...I miss TweetDeck. Nevertheless, these apps are still very good indeed.

Ever since Twitter capped the number of users any third-party Android app at 100,000, it seems unwise to commit actual money toward a Twitter app whose future is so uncertain. So if you’re unhappy with the official software – and plenty of people are – you’re probably best off with one of these free options.

Formerly “Touiteur,” before Twitter cracked down on naming rights, Plume is a pleasant, functional and reasonably attractive Twitter client that offers a generally more pleasant experience than the clunky official app.

Carbon routinely wins praise for being the prettiest Android Twitter client out there, and the visual design is, indeed, striking. A recent overhaul fixed some of the problems with what could be, at times, a somewhat unintuitive UI, but beware – Carbon has apparently run up against the dreaded 100,000-user limit, so you’ll either have to find some way around the problem.

Seesmic has been around for quite some time, and it remains a solid choice, particularly if you’d like some Facebook with your Twitter. The interface is a little dated, but the core functionality is responsive and easy to use.

Ubersocial is a lot like its fellow oldie-but-goodie Seesmic, only more so – the interface is even more bare-bones, but the functionality is great, with in-built Facebook and Gchat integration and lots of other third-party stuff. There’s even a fairly extensive photo editor buried in there.

The choice of the power user, Falcon Pro is the most prominent app yet to run afoul of Twitter’s token policy. Rather than sit back and shut down, however, developer Joaquim Vergès offered an ingenious, if shady and complicated work-around, detailed here by Android Police. It’s pretty great, across the board, if you’re willing to do the dance.

This one’s for the open-source crowd – Twidere is that too-rare free app that doesn’t pack in the ads and in-app purchases or skimp on functionality. It’s not half bad to look at, either, although the UI still seems grounded in the Ice Cream Sandwich era.

This is a little bit more of a specialized inclusion, but the serious-business social media users out there should look no further. Hootsuite is designed with a lot of features to cater to the professional Twitter crowd, like tweet scheduling and analytics.

In contrast to Hootsuite, Tweedle is aiming for the slimmed-down, simplified end of the market – users that just want an attractive UI that lets them handle the basics in an intuitive way. At this, it succeeds completely.

The venerable Echofon doesn’t really stand out from the crowd any more these days, but that’s OK – it’s still a completely workable alternative to something like Plume or the official app. Plus, it’s got cross-platform sync, so you can stay up to date on the same platform, if you’re a Mac or iOS user as well.

Branches is a sort of Zen Twitter app, with a highly simplified interface and an innovative system that groups “noisy” users’ tweets together into a single entry, resulting in a “quieter” timeline. For a certain school of Twitter user, Branches might prove highly attractive.

Email Jon Gold at jgold@nww.com and follow him on Twitter at @NWWJonGold.